


Like Roses Need Water

by Pisan_Zapra



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, One-Sided Attraction, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 10:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10332809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pisan_Zapra/pseuds/Pisan_Zapra
Summary: A bedridden, feverish Fantine confesses her affections.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liberte_Egalite_Broadway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liberte_Egalite_Broadway/gifts).



> I think when I first watched "Les Mis" waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in High School, I shipped these two just a little.
> 
> Alright, not just a little. A lot.
> 
> Thank you, Live_Love_Laflams, for requesting this pairing and bringing back happy memories I have for one of the purest, first big ships I had from one of my first fandoms.

Fantine needed Mssr. Madeleine like roses need water.  His presence by her hospital bedside restored her spirit, electrified the air she breathed, and revitalized her very being.  Although her weakened form was healing, it failed to match the strength of her soul.  The disease had possessed her blood, claimed her skin, but it would not conquer her entirety.  For, at long last, in this world that crushed so many flowers beneath its heels, there were people around who cared and tended for her.

“My Sister,” Fantine whispered, at a volume barely above the breathing of a beetle, “I have a confession to make, but you must promise, so long as you live, you will never share it with another living soul.”  And the nun, who was visiting to check the other woman’s vitals and had not heard her talk in some days, nodded and prepared herself to listen.  “I am in love with a man that I should not fall for.  He is too old for me, too kind for me, but he does not seem to mind what sins I have committed and how it has corrupted me.  I will worry you a little less, Sister, by letting you know it is a chaste affection.  I have been in the company of enough men, who have toyed with my feelings and treated them like baubles on strings.  They had killed my spirit once, and, even after its untimely death, found ways to demean it further.  But this one man restored my life.  He commands it, like Lazarus, to rise once more and compels it to remain by speaking the most sacred name and listening when I speak it as well.

Have I told you that name, my Sister?”  The attending nurse shook her head, for she had not been informed and this was the first (and would be the only) time she had spoken with this patient.  How sad this woman abed was, delicate as crinkled paper!  How beautifully her shorn hair, the color of dulled light, framed such hollowed cheeks.  Yet how much more beguiling Fantine, the former beauty, had been transformed by such abject poverty.  So desperate, so trusting this woman must have been, to have confided such secrets to a woman whose name she did not know.

“The name is Cosette.  If I become well enough to work again, I would like to bring her back to this town.  We could never live under his household, for I love that man too much to bring scandal under his roof, but would that we could live near him.  My little Cosette’s own father has abandoned us, but this good man has not.  I have known how terrible it is, to live without parents, and I would not want my Cosette to hazard that same childhood.  Perhaps, if God is willing, that man could help raise my child.  I have enjoyed his kindness, witnessed his charity, and seen into his very soul.  To grow, under the sunlight of such goodness, would be all that I could want for her.  Could you envision how wondrous it would be, to be cared for by someone so giving all of your life?”

The other woman did not answer, instead laying her hand against the patient’s head and administering a dampened cloth to its surface, but, knowing what she did and believing what she must, she would have compelled to state, _you have God_.

But, thus far, what was it that God had granted to this woman?  How blasphemous it felt, to note the fate that had befallen her.  Disease, a fatherless child, a deathbed purchased as pittance.  

No, so easy it was to assign blame for the Father and so simple it was to forget what He had also granted with His love and mercy.  Was it not through His mercy that this woman, in her time of such desperate need, was found by someone with the means and the heart to support her?  Did He not restore sunlight to this withering sweetbrier?  Did He not maintain some beauty in her countenance, so haggard by circumstances around her.  It was God who remained kind, as He always was, and acted through the compassion of this other person.  It was not God who had reduced her to such a state, but the cruelty of others.  It was the father that had given her a child and left, that had stolen food from her lips.  It was the foreman who had taken her job, that shorn her golden locks.  It was the men who had taken advantage of her state, who had torn pearls from her sad smile.

This woman was a treasure, and, as people treated such richness, much was stolen from her.  Yet, even in this robbed state, there remained some nugget of gold, rescued by human decency and restored by hope.

“How kind it would make my child’s spirit, how giving, to have your hand held all of your life by someone so forgiving,” the woman blinked, so slowly and so gracefully.  For a second, the nun believed that the blonde was already exhausted by this wishing.  Such an assumption was quickly corrected.  If one leaned in closely enough, what would be mistaken as the rising and falling of a chest and mere breathing could, now, be properly identified as more fervent, feverish wishing.  “Even if I pass, if I never see her again, I would love him to take care of her.  She would be loved, well taken care of.  Perhaps she would never have to become as bitter as I have, or as angry.  I hope she wouldn’t be upset, if he should come to pick her up from the innkeeper and his wife.  They had two girls, around her age.  I’ve always hoped they became friends.  According to the letters the Thenardiers write, she is sick often.  I’m certain he’d never let her get sick.  Is it so sinful to confess that I’d lost my faith in the Lord, until I met him and knew his kindness?"

How terribly abrupt and sudden that final question was exhaled, yet so naturally it came.  Was it so terrible that the Sister shook her own wizened head and graced her reply with a smile?  No, it couldn't have been.  This was what the patient needed to hear, like roses need water.


End file.
